Super

Singularly skilled in sculpting arch synth-pop, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s thirteenth album highlights middle age’s continued failure to blunt their edge. Super does allow some nostalgia—“The Pop Kids” and “Twenty-Something” are decorously detailed and gloriously autobiographical—but it’s an impressively urgent album. Masterful opener “Happiness” sounds like the pair bringing several generations of electronic imitators to heel, “Pazzo!” is a sinewy, insidious dancefloor banger, while “The Dictator Decides” and “Sad Robot World” are intelligent, somber polemics that never feel preachy.